In early 2013, Fu Ping published her autobiography Bend, Not Break, coauthored with Meimei Fox. The book, along with her media interviews, has been found to contain many exaggerations, distortions, and fabrications. Fu Ping has responded by claiming to be a victim of a "smear campaign" of ulterior motives.

This blog documents the facts, questions, and falsehoods behind her book and words.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Fu Ping as Inc. Entrepreneur of the Year

In 2005, Inc. selected Fu Ping as its Entrepreneur of the Year and published a comprehensive report on her work and life. This lengthy profile, written by John Brant, was perhaps the very first time Fu Ping told the current version of her story and served a nice prelude to her book Bend, Not Break.

The highlights in this Inc. story:

Fu Ping "attended no school at all between the ages of 7 and 18." "she was educated through torture, exile, and imprisonment..."

"In February 1981, without a trial or even a formal charge, the Chinese government locked 23-year-old Ping Fu in solitary confinement, in a wing of Nanjing prison reserved for political criminals..."

"When Ping was 7 years old and her sister, Hong, 3, the two little girls were taken from their home in Shanghai and delivered to a dormitory for the children of so-called "capitalist-road" parents in Nanjing. It was 1965, the dawn of the Cultural Revolution."

"Ping was forced to watch the Red Guards tie a kindergarten teacher to four horses. The Guard members -- just teenagers themselves -- then startled the horses."

"Ping was forced to watch another teacher be dropped head-first down a dry well."

"She watched the Red Guard scald her little sister with boiling water because one day Hong made too much noise as she played."

"Another day, the Red Guard threw Hong into a river for the fun of watching her drown. Ping jumped into the river and dragged her out. The enraged Guard members then beat the girls, and raped Ping."

"Ping entered the university in Suzhou. She hoped to study business or engineering, following in the footsteps of her engineer father and accountant mother, but the Party directed her to study English as a second language."

"For two years she traveled through rural China, visiting hundreds of towns and villages, interviewing hospital staffers, barefoot doctors, and citizens..." to investigate the rumored epidemic of infanticide.

"In 1980, she delivered her findings to her professor. A few months later, in January 1981, Shanghai's largest newspaper published a report based on Ping's research. The report was widely praised, although credit, of course, accrued to senior government officials. The story was subsequently published nationwide in People's Daily, then picked up by the international media... The global community was outraged. The United Nations imposed sanctions on China."

"'You must never say a word about your involvement in this project,' the official told her. 'You are forbidden to engage in any political activity. You will never return to China, but your family remains here. If in any way you disobey these instructions, your family will suffer the consequences. Have I made myself clear, Comrade?... she was being deported to the United States."

"Two weeks later, Ping boarded a United Airlines flight from Shanghai to San Francisco."

"She was being sent to the University of New Mexico -- she didn't know why New Mexico."

"Ping knew three shreds of English: please, thank you, and help."

"Officials had issued her the ticket to San Francisco, and $80 in traveler's checks to get her to Albuquerque."

"She spent the 12-hour flight alternatively staring out the window and pouring out her thoughts by scribbling notes on paper napkins. She didn't have writing paper and did not know how to ask for any. When the flight attendant offered her food or drink, Ping shook her head no, and pointed to the stack of cocktail napkins."

A lengthy description of the bizarre Vietnamese-American kidnapping tale

A lengthy description of how Fu Ping met Lan Sharman who offered her a part-time job with a six-figure annual income. Sharman even offered her a 5% stake in his company to keep her from leaving, which she declined.

"She was Andreessen's boss as he developed the Mosaic Internet Browser that blossomed into Netscape -- she says she suggested that he work on a browser."

[Before she met and eventually married Herbert Edelsbrunner] "She had made many friends in America, but no intimate ones, and had allowed no man to get close to her. Outwardly warm and exuberant, Ping felt frozen inside."

"In 1968, when Ping was 10, her mother was permitted to return to Nanjing. (Her father was retained in the camp.) The homecoming, however, was far from the tender reunion that Ping had fantasized. Rather than comfort her daughter, the woman, half-crazed by her own exile and suffering, persecuted her."

As far as I know, all undergraduate applicants, regardless of citizenship, whose native language is not English or who have not attended schools at the secondary level or above for at least three years of full time study at an institution where English is the principal language of instruction, must present a score of 500 or above on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) IN ORDER TO OBTAIN AN F1 VISA!

The author knew that, a precondition or the ground for being Gang-Raped was: she must be left alone, her parents were not with her, and after she was raped, her parents would not be informed of it. If any parent of hers was around her during the time, that could not happen. According to the book, or Ping Fu’s talk in interviews before her story caught the attention of the Chinese, she was in “reeducation camp”, she got no schooling, she was separate from her parents. But in latest interviews, she said she was not in labor camp, she was having a formal schooling (forbes, jennagoudreau, 2013/01/31/b end-not-break-author-ping-fu-responds-to-backlash/). What’s more, based on Fang Zouzi’s investigation, at least one of her parent was all around her during1968. Thus the whole story lost its ground and no need to bother to examine what she said in the book to prove she is making up the whole gang rape story.

5

The soccer field where she was “gang raped” is the same soccer field where she watched a teacher torn apart by four horses. Wittingly, Ping Fu now said seeing a teacher torn apart by four horses was her “emotional memory” due to her traumatized childhood. Is this Gang Rape her “emotional memory”? I am pretty sure the answer is yes. Reading the gang rape story, I was a little sick. We can tell that the author has the American readers and Hollywood in her mind while wring the book. She tries to make her book sexy by adding violence and sex scene to it, and she uses a child. “The wet clothes hugged my body tightly. I felt naked.” In 1968, the girl was most likely wearing something made of cotton cloth. It would not be that transparent and would not make the girl looked “like naked”; even she appeared naked, a ten year Chinese girl at the time was not as “sexy” as it would be in an American reader’s imagination. Their chests were no different from a boy’s due to gene and the nutrition at the time though Ping Fu claimed to have 8 dishes every day before eight. To fabricate a violent child sex scene of gang rape to add flavor to a “memoir” is very despicable, very low and to keep acting as the victim of the fabricated gang rape is very sick, just like the naked emperor pretended that he was wearing the fancy clothes!I have a few words for Ping Fu: don’t be enslaved by the role defined by a “memoir” written by a ghost writer ( I am pretty sure a lot of stories, including this gang rape one, are the work of the ghost writer), make peace with yourself and be yourself. Z.C Feb 28, 2013To Learn more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/08/1185563/-Inconsistencies-in-Ping-Fu-s-gang-rape-story

No, nothing above happened. 1. She was taken back to her dorm the very day by a stuff.Questions: How did the stuff take her to the dorm, did she walk home? Was she carried home by the stuff, naked (since her clothes were a pile of dirty and bloody clothes)? If not, who provided her the clothes? She worn skirt or pants? Most likely she could not wear pants. 2. Her parents were not informed. (To make sure this really happened, her parents must be kept out of the story )3. Her sister brought her food. Some kind neighbors helped her out. But how could she go to bathroom? Could she walk? How did she pee? 4. No investigation (a pile of torn and bloody clothes was taken home with her the very night. P 78).5. Subsequently, of course, nobody in the wild world knows that she was gang raped except Ping Fu herself (actually, she herself was not supposed to know it – she passed out in the very beginning of it according the book.)

The author would argue that, no, nobody would report this rape case, because she was a child of the black element. If truly something like this happened, IT MUST Be reported once any adult knew she was raped and harmed so horribly. While you, as a writer of a fiction, you know that the horrible things was done by a group of kids, but in real life, the adult who saw you and treated you didn’t know as you know . They only knew that there was a cold blood rapist (surely an adult) , a murder, a most horrible criminal ,was lingering on the campus. They would worry the rapist harm their children! It must be reported to the authority and an emergent hunt for the violator would be carried out, it would HAVE made a loud noise and many people will still remember the crime till today!

If you want to claim it really happened and nobody in the university know that, the author should put it this way: I picked up myself from the ground of the soccer field, struggled back to the dorm, took a cold water shower, changed my clothes and lied down, cried and cried with my little sister ….